Upright cleaners typically have a wheeled head assembly, which carries a fixed cleaner head in plane-parallel contact with the floor surface. This head assembly is mounted on a reclining ‘upright’ body which carries a handle at its upper end. In the conventional floor-cleaning mode, a user reclines the ‘upright’ body until the handle is at a convenient height, and then uses the handle manually to push the cleaner across the floor, maintaining the cleaner head in plane parallel contact with the floor surface.
It is often desirable to vacuum-clean above the level of a floor. For example, it may be desirable to vacuum-clean shelving, stairs or the upper corners of a room. It is usually completely impractical to use the main cleaner head for this purpose: the cleaner will almost certainly be too heavy and cumbersome, and the cleaner head itself too large. Instead, many modern upright vacuum cleaners are provided with a suction wand which connects to the main separating apparatus onboard the vacuum cleaner via a flexible hose. This wand and hose assembly allows the upright vacuum cleaner to be operated, as required, in the manner of a cylinder (or “canister”) vacuum cleaner—making “above-the-floor” cleaning much more practical.